books0977:
Portrait of Laura Battiferri, detail (1555). Agnolo Bronzino [Agnolo di Cosimo] (Italian, 1503-1572). Oil on canvas. Palazzo Vecchio, Florence.
Bronzino employs visual cues. In this case, he paints the Florentine intellectual aristocrat, poet Laura Battiferri (1523–1589). Battiferri marks her page in a book of Petrarch’s sonnets.
Oh blessed be the day, the month, the year,
the season and the time, the hour, the instant,
the gracious countryside, the place where I was
struck by those two lovely eyes that bound me; — Petrarch